GOP Leaders Take Political Risk With Deal

Republican House Speaker John Boehner brought the fiscal-cliff bill to a vote on Tuesday night without support from a majority of his caucus, breaking the 'Hastert rule.' His two top deputies voted against the legislation.
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Neil King Jr. and Patrick O'Connor

Jan. 2, 2013 7:18 p.m. ET

The Republican Party's two top leaders, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, both took risks in backing the fiscal-cliff deal, opening them to recriminations from conservatives within their party and separating them from some other top GOP lawmakers who opposed the bill.

Mr. McConnell's intervention in crafting the final deal has burnished his image as an arch tactician but could leave him politically exposed in 2014 as he faces re-election in Kentucky, where there have been murmurs of a potential primary challenge from the right. Some conservative pundits quickly dubbed the bill the "McConnell tax hike."

Tea-party groups in Kentucky blasted Mr. McConnell Wednesday for his role in negotiating the deal and praised the "no" vote cast by fellow Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who was one of just five GOP senators to vote against the package in the 89-8 Senate vote.

Mr. McConnell "was not on our side, he was not on our children's side, and Kentucky deserves better," the Louisville Tea Party said in an email sent to its membership. No substantial primary-election opponent to Mr. McConnell has surfaced, so far.

In defending his vote on the Senate floor on Monday, Mr. McConnell said the bill was "good for the country" but added it was now time to move on to cutting government spending. His office declined to comment further.

The Senate minority leader brokered the 11th-hour tax package along with Vice President Joe Biden, after Mr. Boehner failed to gain support among House Republicans for his own "Plan B" approach just before Christmas.

In the end, the bill passed the House with just over a third of Republicans voting for it, an outcome that cut against an established principle—called the Hastert rule, for former GOP House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert—that Republicans wouldn't advance legislation without a majority of GOP support.

Mr. Boehner emerged from the fight weakened and battered within his own caucus, many Republicans say, but facing no real threat to his hold on the speakership in the next Congress, which begins Thursday.

Even critics argue his hand could be strengthened as the focus shifts from taxes to spending cuts as part of any deal to lift the debt ceiling, the next big fight on the Washington agenda, now just two months away.

"John and I have not always seen eye to eye, but he's very much underestimated in terms of his strength—and especially now that we are moving off the tax front, where the president had the upper hand, and onto the spending front, where John Boehner will have the leverage," said Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.).

Debate over Mr. Boehner's future comes as Republicans begin to weigh potential fallout from the fiscal-cliff deal, which raises taxes on wealthier Americans but makes no new spending cuts.

Mr. Boehner's two deputies in the House, Eric Cantor of Virginia and Kevin McCarthy of California, both voted against the bill. Some of the potential 2016 presidential hopefuls took different stances, with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio voting no, and Rep. Paul Ryan, the 2012 vice-presidential nominee, voting in favor.

Within the House, conservative critics acknowledge that Mr. Boehner entered the fiscal-cliff showdown with a weak hand, but they say he was too quick to cede ground to the White House on tax increases and did too little to press the need for spending cuts.

"Putting revenues on the table was not the best move he could have made," said Rep. Mike Mulvaney, a freshman Republican from South Carolina who believes the speaker should have done more to make it "clear we want real cuts in spending."

Critics of Mr. Boehner hit him for not exerting more discipline over his ranks, but his aides say that doing so was never his intention. When he took over as speaker two years ago, Mr. Boehner vowed to let legislators legislate and to avoid writing laws from inside the speaker's office.

The final hours of the fiscal-cliff scramble were a classic illustration of the Boehner style. He first declined to say whether or not he favored the Senate bill, and he let his fellow Republicans vent and suggest alternatives, even at the risk of bringing down the entire package. He later told the GOP conference that he planned to vote in favor of the deal but without attempting to rally others to his side, say lawmakers involved in the closed-door talks.

The big question is whether this hands-off approach will work any better this year, as Republicans promise to wage another high-stakes battle to cut government spending. The GOP believes it will have leverage in those talks due to the need for Republican votes to raise the nation's statutory borrowing limit, or debt ceiling, about two months from now.

Under Mr. Boehner, Republicans nearly brought the federal government to a standstill in the 2011 standoff with the White House over lifting the debt ceiling.

Mr. Boehner's supporters say one reason his speakership is safe is that so few others would want the job.

"Being speaker right now is the worst job in Washington—totally thankless," said Rep. Pat Tiberi, a longtime Boehner ally and, like the speaker, an Ohio Republican. "Every day [Mr. Boehner] is dealt the worst hand imaginable, and he tries to play it as best he can."

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